Resilience and Opportunity examines the important ingredients in post-disaster recovery, with an eye toward how to rebuild communities that are more resilient and prosperous in the face of multiple disasters.

Land Administration for Sustainable Development describes, from a global perspective, the new and innovative policies, systems, and technologies that have been applied to a rapidly evolving concept of land administration.

Urban communities around the world face increased stress from natural disasters linked to climate change, and other urban pressures. They need to grow rapidly stronger in order to cope, adapt and flourish. Strong social networks and social cohesion can be more important for a com...munity's resilience than the actual physical structures of a city. But how can urban planning and design support these critical collective social strengths? This book offers blue sky thinking from the applied social and behavioural sciences, and urban planning. It looks at case studies from 14 countries around the world - including India, the USA, South Africa, Indonesia, the UK and New Zealand - focusing on initiatives for housing, public space and transport stops, and also natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. Building on these insights, the authors propose a 'gold standard': a socially aware planning process and policy recommendation for those drawing up city sustainability and climate change resilience strategies, and urban developers looking to build climate-proof infrastructure and spaces. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of urban studies, resilience studies and climate change policy, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in related fields.Read more

Because wherever people cross paths and linger, wherever we gather informally, strike up a conversation and get to know one another, relationships blossom and communities emerge - and where communities are strong, people are safer and healthier, crime drops and commerce thrives, ...and peace, tolerance and stability take root.Read more

"In the 1970s, the Nepalese government established an agreement with New Zealand for help in setting up a national park in the Mt Everest region of the Himalayas. Bruce Jefferies, an Assistant Supervising Ranger with New Zealand's National Park Service, took off for Nepal with hi...s wife Margaret, and three young children. They had little idea of what to expect in this remote, high-altitude environment. Under the Himalayan Sky is Margaret's memoir of the time the family spent in Khumbu (Mt Everest), with no running water or electricity, largely cut off from the outside world, living on the traditional local diet of potatoes and tea. In spite of what might be perceived as hardships, the family embraced life amongst the colourful and hospitable Sherpa people. Margaret's story paints a fascinating portrait of this region of Nepal in the early days before large scale tourism and trekking opened it up to the outside world."--Amazon.Read more

A narrative history of council housing--from slums to the Grenfell Tower Urgent, timely and compelling, Municipal Dreams brilliantly brings the national story of housing to life. In this landmark reappraisal of council housing, historian John Boughton presents an alternative hist...ory of Britain. Rooted in the ambition to end slum living, and the ideals of those who would build a new society, Municipal Dreams looks at how the state's duty to house its people decently became central to our politics. The book makes it clear why that legacy and its promise should be defended. Traversing the nation in this comprehensive social, political and architectural history of council housing, Boughton offers a tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates--some happily ordinary, some judged notorious. He asks us to understand their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design; the competing ideologies that have promoted state housing and condemned it; the economic factors that have always constrained our housing ideals; the crisis wrought by Right to Buy; and the evolving controversies around regeneration. Boughton shows how losing the dream of good housing has weakened our community and hurt its most vulnerable--as was seen most catastrophically in the fire at Grenfell Tower.Read more